Aggravated and simple assault were the most common of the 588,490 violent acts recorded against females by intimate partners, according to the Justice Department agency. Those 502,690 included threats, attempted attacks and attacks without weapons that largely resulted in minor injuries.

There were more than 44,000 robberies and nearly 42,000 rapes against women and girls by intimate acquaintances.

In contrast, there were 103,220 nonfatal violent offenses committed by spouses, girlfriends or boyfriends against males that year _ about 3 percent of the total such crimes against men.

Even though women and girls are victims of violence by intimate partners more frequently than men, the total number of such acts has fallen by almost 50 percent in recent years. In 1993, there were more than 1.1 million such crimes against females and almost 163,000 against men.

The report also included FBI murder statistics for 2000, the most recent year available. It found that 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by intimate partners that year, which continues a decline that began in 1976.

That year, 1,600 women and 1,357 men were murdered by an intimate.

Still, 33 percent of all killings of women in 2000 were at the hands of an intimate partner, compared with just 4 percent of male murder victims, the statistics show.